Guest Blogger: Alan Cumming!

As you may know, Alan Cumming, star of stage and screen, is a vocal supporter of intactivism, and serves on Intact America’s Board of Advocates. Alan was recently asked by the Wall Street Journal to write about circumcision, but the paper’s editors ultimately felt his essay was “too raw” for their readers. We are delighted to print it here, with Alan’s permission, in its entirety.

“May the foreskin be with you,” by Alan Cumming

No man will deny that it feels pretty great to have someone gasp at your penis.

Well, that’s what happened to me when I first moved to America and started to show people the contents of my underpants. But their gasping was not due to my gargantuan girth (though no complaints so far, thank you very much!) but more to the fact that I, unlike the vast majority of American males, have not been genitally mutilated. I have a foreskin. I am intact.

The gasping was due to the fact that most people had never seen a real, unadulterated, uncircumcised penis before, and some of the people who were seeing mine had, to be frank, been round the block a few times so their reaction was all the more surprising and on reflection, upsetting.

For not only did they have no idea of what a foreskin looked like, they also had no idea how to deal with it when we got down to business. I had to give quite a few seminars on how it worked. Can you imagine being in your thirties and suddenly having to explain to lovers how your genitals functioned, or having them gush that they’d never seen one like yours before, or, worse, recoil in disdain and say ‘what do you even do with that?’

It made me feel that I was the weird one, I was deformed, I was not normal, when of course it was they who had had a piece of the most sensitive part of their bodies removed. I was the intact one. I was complete, I told myself. They were the ones who were lacking, literally, and who needed to be counseled and awakened to these facts.

We have a foreskin for a reason. Mine protects the most sensitive part of my body. Of course when I say this in the now many conversations I have had on this topic, there is always some guy who scoffs and says he couldn’t possibly be any more sensitive down there, if he were it might be some sort of problem. To him, and to you now, dear reader, I offer this little parable:

Say I am having a shower and as I am toweling myself off my foreskin gets pulled back, revealing the head of my penis. When I begin to dress, if the head is still out and it touches the fabric of my underwear, it is so uncomfortable and sensitive that I have to pull my foreskin back down immediately before I can finish dressing. That’s how sensitive it is. And that’s also how much sensitivity you lose when you are circumcised.

Of course no man wants to hear that he is missing out on sexual pleasure by something that happened when he was a few days old and is therefore irreversible as well as impossible for him to even conceive of the difference. That’s why I think a lot of men who are circumcised are initially defensive and protective of the procedure, and see any opposition to it by people like me as hysterical and cranky. I get it. Maybe I would be like that too if I wasn’t intact, and if I spent most of my life never encountering anyone who was.

But this defensiveness can turn rather aggressive when a discussion, um, extends into anything more than a passing comment and I am always amazed by people’s reasoning for why this really distressing thing was done to them and in turn why they intend to continue the tradition on their own male offspring. We are all so rightly horrified by the genital mutilation of girls in some parts of the world. I say, why don’t we have the same abhorrence about it happening to little boys here?

The phrase ‘Religious reasons’ will be quoted though most are vague on what these actually are when pressed. Occasionally the ‘covenant with God’ angle will rear its head, though when I say that we have stopped most of the other barbaric practices described in the Bible so why are we so keen to continue this one, nobody really wants to listen. Then, prospective fathers who are defending future circumcision on their boys will say things like ‘He’ll be teased in the locker rooms.’ Why? For having all his body parts intact? Or, my personal favorite: ‘I want him to look like me!’ Is this a part of American culture I have not been enlightened about yet? Do you all go home at Thanksgiving and get your wangs out in front of your fathers and compare notes? I mean, really.

So I have decided to get together a book, a sort of circumcision 101. In it you will find everything you ever wanted to know (and some stuff I daresay you didn’t) about circumcision. Why it’s done, how it’s done, the religious reasons, the social reasons, the myths, the facts, testimonials from those who’ve had it done, those who haven’t and also, how it can go wrong, horribly, horribly wrong. It’s the perfect read for anyone with a penis and those who love them, which covers the whole population of the planet so fingers crossed that this will be a cash cow for Intact America and Norm-UK, two organizations I am affiliated with and who are doing sterling work in educating and advising on this matter, and who, like me, really want above all to make parents question if they really want their infant son to be subjected to such a traumatic, irreversible and potentially dangerous medical procedure. Let’s get the conversation started, I say.

I have been trying to do that for years, ever since that first gasp as I dropped my drawers. Once, when I was working on Broadway in Cabaret” the girl who did my make-up confessed she had never seen an uncircumcised penis. I thought this was shocking and decided tonight was the night. She was understandably a little freaked out, but we had known each other for over a year and she painted a swastika on my right butt cheek nearly every night of that year so we were pretty close. And as I said, I was doing her a favour. Knowledge is power and all that.

She stepped out into the hall. I pulled down my dance belt and presented the Cumming manhood. We had agreed I would call her in, she would take a quick look then go back out of the room again so I could rearrange myself, then call her back in and she’d get back to work. I shouted I was ready and the door opened slowly and I saw her little face full of trepidation. But only for a second!

‘Oh, I see,’ she exclaimed, bounding towards me, all nerves gone, now caught up in a physiological field trip. ‘It’s not at all how I thought it would be!’

‘What did you think it would be like?’’ I asked, feeling slightly objectified but also in the same moment acknowledging I had totally invited it.

‘Well,’ she said, her eyes still fixed on my pudendum. ‘I thought it would be more like a flip-top bin!’

‘What, like you’d stand on my foot and my foreskin would pull back?’ I guffawed.

‘Something like that!’ she shrieked, and soon the two of us were bent double with the silliness of it all.

At that moment, a vision was hatched. I chose to accept a mission to lift the lid as it were, to educate and enlighten what a penis is supposed to look like, without having to actually get mine out every time to do so!

May The Foreskin Be With You will be published later this year by Magnus Books.

Intact America is proud to count Alan among our friends. We look forward to hearing your reactions to his story, and also your own foreskin-friendly or foreskin-hostile experiences!

It’s 2015 and this page still getting hits, I’m glad people like Mr. Cumming makes it their personal mission to educate & awaken people, I have two boys and had to have the dreaded conversation about not having them circumcised with their mothers, my sons are intact just like daddy.

I applaud Alan’s efforts, but the glans is not the most sensitive part of the body–the foreskin is. The glans is not sexually sensitive, it senses pressure, wet, cold and heat, but it lacks the specialised light-touch receptors and stretch receptors in the prepuce. Basically the foreskin is where ALL pleasure originates from.

I know this for a fact, because I had a foreskin until I was 14, when I was duped into circumcision for phimosis without my informed consent. Phimosis is never an indication for circumcision, because it can be cured via stretching and application of steroid cream. As a last resort, preputioplasty is the most invasive procedure that need be conducted, which does not impact negatively on a man’s potential for sexual pleasure.

There is a myth that there are many medical reasons for circumcision. In fact, there is only ever one reason to cut off a man’s foreskin and that’s if he has cancer of the foreskin. There is no other medical indication. Apart from in the cancer scenario, circumcision contravenes the ‘first do no harm’ principle of medical ethics.

I’m in Scotland and I want to sue the National Health Service for ruining my life. However, I cannot, because there is a statute of limitations on medical negligence claims, so once I passed 19 yrs old I forfeited the right to claim. I don’t understand how they can get away with this, because a woman can get her child abuser 30 yrs on arrested and charged if enough evidence presents itself.

Excellent!!! Thank you SO MUCH for sharing! My husband and I have 2 intact sons and I literally thank God that we were educated JUST before our first was born, b/c otherwise he would have been cut – we didn’t know any better. I am grateful for people like Alan in the public eye who are speaking out about circumcision. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! Because of what my husband and I have learned – especially since we have boys – I have made it a mission of mine to educate my friends and family on the topic. Some thank me, others have stopped speaking to me, but I will not stop sharing until this is eradicated.

I gasped the first time I saw a normal, natural, intact penis too. It wasn’t until I was 31 (I’m an American woman), but it was with delight. This issue upsets me a lot for the very reason mentioned here–in America we have an upside down notion that what is in fact NOT normal is normal and what is normal is abnormal. WHY?? Why are only American baby boys born defective and in need of immediate surgical intervention for something that is not only NOT defective but serves a very important function all through life. It is just sad. SAD.

First, anyone so shallow as to recoil at the appearance of my penis would immediately end the encounter. An honest comment in return would be to express sadness at their mutilation. Find better company.

As far as the book goes. Please don’t miss the number one reason for circumcision: $$$$$.
I just got finished with a Google search: foreskin fibroblasts. After cutting, the foreskin is sold to biotech companies (of which there are many) that use them for all sorts of consumer product including skincare creams and cosmetics. Foreskins are a multi-billion dollar business. This is a good reference:

That was so funny I laughed out loud, rare for me. I grew up intact but had phimosis in my late 20s and had some bad advice from Genitourinary specialist and agreed to a circumcision. It could have been treated differently but would have been more work for the docs.

So, better to do it to babies? No, 99% of cases it will never be necessary to do anything to any boy’s or mans widger apart from washing with warm water.

I would not have it done if I had the choice again, you loose a lot of sensitivity, and a circumcised penis is MORE DIFFICULT to keep clean because it is exposed, to fibres, the glands can come into contact with things when nude or sitting on the toilet.

In 100% of cases I am against circumcision of children as they do not have the ability to choose. As a post 18 year old, I chose for myself, I made a bad choice but I made that choice so I live with it. I DO NOT have the right to choose for any one under 18……and no one does.

Leave children along, if there is something really medically necessary to fix, I mean life threatening, then talk, but that will be probably never in a pre pubescent boy.

Religious exemptions? Never. Qu’ran and both bibles state people and nature were created perfect so why mutilate it?

Ban child Male Genital Mutilation and imprison any one medical or shaman doing it, and we start to end child Female genital Mutilation.

A couple of comments. There is a debate over whether there are sebaceous glands on the inner foreskin. One study reported finding them. Taylor and later Cold and Taylor did not see them. There are antimicrobial compounds and agent in the subpreputial wetness, but they come from other sources.

There is a transexual element to both male and female genital cutting. In female genital cutting the more masculine elements are removed while in male genital cutting the more feminine elements are removed. In both cases they want each sex to be less like the other, which is probably the opposite of the intent of most transexuals. Also in both cases there is a lack of consent.

Restoration will cover the glans and revive some of its sensitivity, but will not replace the fine-touch nerve endings in foreskin that have been cut off. Alan focuses on the sensitivity of the glans because that is what he notices. Other intact man see the foreskin as not the wrapping, but the candy. The combined package of a more sensitive glans and the fine-touch response of foreskin is what the circumcised man is missing. It is also the lack of the combination that makes coitus less enjoyable for female partners.

And just for the record: restoration does make a difference, if only for the psychological comfort afforded by looking normal and unmutilated again. The loss of the apparent ring scar is in itself for many a great relief. To suffer involuntary genital alteration is a traumatic event, a wound that endures. Anything that assuages and lessens the grief and sense of loss is to be valued and recommended. Healing is a long-term psychological and physical process that calls for every sort of encouragement and support.

Wonderful article!! But I do have one correction. You wrote about your book: “It’s the perfect read for anyone with a penis and those who love them, which covers the whole population of the planet…” Not quite true given the fact that about 5-10% of the female population is lesbian. However, given the fact that lesbians are having children, half of whom will be male, they will need to read your book also, albeit, for the sake of their children, if not their own. I look forward to its publication.
BTW-If we should ever meet I will play ignorant and insist you show me too. 😉

“People who get there (sic) genitals amputated or re-designed are commonly referred to as transsexuals. The circumcised are Sexually Amputated Men and have therefore, been made trans-sexual… and they don’t even know it… or maybe they do and don’t openly admit it.”

Sorry, but as a transexual myself, this is totally silly. The loss of a man’s foreskin does not make him transexual. There’s a big difference between circumcision and having one’s genitals surgically re-designed or removed. Transexuals may choose this, because they identify as the opposite sex and wish to make their body conform to this identity insofar as possible. Circumcised men are no less men than intact men.

“Trans” – meaning across or beyond – merely refers to a moving and a changing. The Sexually Amputated or ‘Circumcised’ have been moved and changed.

They have been made different from their natural physical manifestation because of social attitudes towards and denial of complete male gender and sexual expression.

Circumcising is the Surgical Redesigning of the penis.
It is the re-assignment from the natural state to a partially amputated state.

Circumcised men are Very Much less male than the sexually complete. The acting out of gender Roles is a different issue. Gender expression and identity occurs on a spectrum.

Physically and Sexually Complete vs the Amputated, Altered and Redesigned.

If you couldn’t relate to the gender you were born into than you have other issues at work and should probably stay out of this conversation.
Informed consent as you have had concerning your reassignment surgeries and hormone pill-popping is vastly different from sexually amputating defenseless babies.

As a tranny yourself, you should have known that by now: “There’s a big difference between circumcision and having one’s genitals surgically re-designed or removed.”
That was a stupid statement.

So again I will remind you:
Circumcision IS the Surgical Redesigning of the penis.
It IS the Re-assignment from the natural state to a partially amputated state.
It is the Removal of vital parts of the genitals.

Can somebody delete this comment above, please? There’s a solidarity here in terms of the non-consensual assignment of bodies to a gender binary. Cismen who are smart enough to understand the non-consensuality of infant circumcision should be smart enough not to compare transsexuality to an “amputated state” or to regard anyone as “sexually [in]complete”. Transphobia is never a good look.

Thank you, Alan, for having the courage to speak up! You have made it easier for other intact males to do the same. And, you’ve also helped people to understand what is missing when a male is circumcised. I would like to clarify something that even intact men often don’t realize. While the glans (head of the penis) is sensitive when exposed and comes into contact with anything other than mucosal membrane in the same way the eyeball feels when it is touched, it is not the most sensitive part of the penis. The ridged band that encircles the opening of the foreskin contains 20,000 to 70,000 specialized, erogenous nerve endings (like those in the fingertips that feel light touch and heat). These are the nerve endings that let a man know very specifically what his penis is feeling and, without them, is the reason circumcised males have premature ejaculation. They cannot ride the wave to orgasm because there is no feedback to the brain, and a circumcised male does not know where he is in relation to the ejaculatory threshold. As Hugh Young says, circumcision replaces the accelerator with an “off-on” switch. The sensitive glans, when not protected, becomes dry and calloused and loses sensitivity with touch, as it must to protect itself from exposure to the external environment. But, the nerve endings and stretch receptors in the ridged band encircling the opening of the foreskin are what allow a male to enjoy the wholeness of his body and the fullness of his sexual experience.

Thank you, Marilyn for so clearly describing this important fact. A fact that seems to escape so many people who seem to think that the glans is the most sensitive part. I wish this study was more widely read: http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/Sorrells_2007 , for it clearly illustrates that the five most sensitive parts on a normal, intact penis are amputated in a circumcision.

It wasn’t until I was in my 20’s that I first saw an intact man, after having a modest sexual history with circumcised men. I have only seen two uncircumcised men, but I was fortunate enough to marry the second one. Here is the thing. When erect, a circumcised penis and an uncircumcised penis look identical (at least to me). So, I’m not sure where all these “gasping” women came from. Not to be too critical, but I think Alan’s article does a bit of an injustice to this subject (even though the tone, I understand, is meant to be comical), because it perpetuates the notion that the uncircumcised penis looks strange. It looks the same during that critical time when a woman is actually paying any attention to it! Once I saw an uncircumcised penis for the first time, I really never understood what the big deal was.
On another note, I’m so thankful for this organization. Even after marrying an intact man, I didn’t realize what an important issue this was until I had my son, who is of course, perfectly intact!! I can’t even imagine what a loving mother has to tell herself to hand her newborn over to someone to conduct such a horrific procedure. Thanks to Georganne and everyone who supports this important mission.

Hi Jill. I agree it is difficult to normalize the experience of being an all natural male in our “unnaturally normal” culture of circumcision. But I disagree that disfigured penises look the same as all natural penises. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell in photographs because the scar can be located close to the sulcus (the groove below the glans) but up close and personal you can always tell. I’ve seen some that are downright sad where the scarring is ragged and stretched likely because there wasn’t enough tissue to accommodate erection when the boy became a man. Honestly, sometimes it looks like a burn injury. Even the more benign looking cuts often have an abrupt color change if the man has any natural pigmentation in that area. The natural penis looks so much more healthy, plump, and red-blooded to me —> http://foreskin.tumblr.com/archive

I believe Jill meant they look the same in a completely superficial, first impression, sort of way. When aroused, the foreskin may retract on some intact males, exposing the head. This may give the impression of a circumcised penis. Of course, upon further inspection, there are many differences, as stated above.

To me, it is evident that this article is not suited to the Wall Street Journal or any other metropolitan daily newspaper. The Village Voice or Rolling Stone would have been ideal, and the Atlantic or Vanity Fair would have been OK. It remains the case that mainstream America is still not ready to hear the intactivist conversation. When will People magazine do a story on Marilyn Milos and Georgann Chapin? When will Time or Newsweek forthrightly reveal that in other western nations, circumcision is one of dying, gone, or never happened? When will the New York media, who in the past were quite willing to linger over the Hite Report and the salacious novels of Erica Jong, reveal that many younger American women who have had premarital sex with both cut and intact men, have decided that they prefer intact partners?

Fantastic article, Alan! Congratulations.
Of course the Wall Street Journal is too scared to print it lest they get all the Jews, Muslims and male-mutilating Christians up in arms.

Then there are the ignorant and opinionated women who feel, as my sister once put it,
“Baby boys are born dirty and diseased and their ugly little problem has to get cut off and thrown away. Besides it prevents that nasty part from getting cancer! Besides, men aren’t smart enough to know how to wash it.”

Joan Rivers often says on television, “We circumcise for cleanliness and beauty.” I’ve seen her say it many times.

People who get there genitals amputated or re-designed are commonly referred to as transsexuals. The circumcised are Sexually Amputated Men and have therefore, been made trans-sexual… and they don’t even know it… or maybe they do and don’t openly admit it.

Foreskin ‘Restoration’ is quaint but kind of silly – I have several friends in the process right now – but you can’t restore the Veins that carried the Blood to the hood of the penis and then the return trip of the blood back to the heart.
The super network of nerves that sent electrical neural impulses to the brain are also permanently lost as well and the mind is forced to re-wire itself post amputation and make adjustments to work around the loss.
For me the most important loss would be the Sebaceous Glands.
All of the sebaceous glands in humans have been demonstrated to show similarity in structure and secrete sebum by a Holocrine process.
Sebum excreted by the sebaceous gland is primarily composed of tryglicerides, wax esters, and squalene. Wax esters, like squalene, are unique to sebum and not produced anywhere else in the body. Sebum also contains 45% water-insoluble fatty acids known to have broad antimicrobial activity.
That right, the fluid – or sebum – that keeps the penis moist are Anti-Microbial.

“Restoration” attempts won’t get the veins, neural network, sebaceous glands or pride and dignity returned to restorers.

As an Intact American, I applaud your bravery and openness. For me, living without foreskin would be like not having lips or eyelids.
It’s that vital to my fully functioning life on this our planet Earth.

Excellent piece. As an intact American man (over 98% of American boys in my birth year were mutilated) I concur completely with the importance of the foreskin and the sensitivity that is lost. I, too, have been made to feel dirty, inferior, etc. No more! Thanks to a family member’s botched circumcision, I was left alone!

@EddieMcManus It is true that the nerves and blood vessels removed by circumcision will never be restored, by any means, yet. Medical science moves forward. Just saying. As a non-surgical restorer, I need to inform you that I definitely have greater sensitivity. Once the glans is de-keratinized, the uncomfortable sensation Alan describes when getting dressed is my experience, too. Also, whatever amount of frenulum that remains is stimulated by the mechanical gliding action of the restored foreskin during sex. Visually, intact men, nor women for that matter, can see a difference. Esthetically, my penis appears as it was intended. Oh yes, and, my sebaceous glands seem to be working just fine. Be thankful that you were left intact. Try being a bit more supportive toward others who were not so lucky.

I hope his book includes information on foreskin restoration. He does not mention it in his essay and says “is therefore irreversible as well as impossible for him to even conceive of the difference”. This is not totally true since many restored men who are able to keep their glans covered have the same experience he describes of extreme discomfort if their exposed glans touches their underwear and certainly can tell the difference. I realize circumcised men will never experience what it was like to be intact due to the permanent loss of skin and nerves but the difference between having a restored foreskin and not is like day and night in itself (at least for many men). So I hope that Alan and Intact America will remember to mention that foreskin restoration is possible and give some hope to circumcised men. If circumcised men are just left with all the pain and anger of being circumcised I believe that that can contribute to defensiveness and denial and the conscious or unconscious desire to inflict circumcision on the next generation.